


like a heartbeat (drives you mad)

by astrolesbian



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M, basically just um. taako angst, i have a lot of feelings about the twins all the time, spoilers. obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 11:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15639825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrolesbian/pseuds/astrolesbian
Summary: there are some things that you don't really forget. things that are embedded into your bones, in your heart. (wherever that heart might be.)or: eight ways taako almost remembered.





	like a heartbeat (drives you mad)

listen carefully to the sound  
of your loneliness  
like a heartbeat, drives you mad  
in the stillness of remembering   
what you had and what you lost

_-fleetwood mac, "dreams"_

 

* * *

 

 

1.

“For someone as vain as you are,” Sazed had said to Taako once, lip curled, “you sure hate looking in mirrors.”

He had meant it as a jab, and that’s how it had landed. Taako, irritated, had fired back the sick fucking burn of “ _that’s_ because I don’t have to _check_ to make sure I look good, I already know that for a _fact,_ baby!”

But then he’d started thinking about it, and then he couldn’t _stop_ thinking about it, and then he ended up buying a mirror and stashing it in his closet. He never even looked in mirrors when trying on clothes or doing his makeup — he used magic for makeup and clothes _always_ looked good on him, and that had always seemed like a fair enough reason to not use mirrors before, but—

Well. He doesn’t like being called strange, doesn’t like that smug motherfucking look on Sazed’s face when he mentions it, like he’s finally got something to hold over him. So he steels his nerves — and he has _nerves_ about this, what the hell, ridiculous, _stupid_ — and balances the mirror against his wall. He takes a breath, and adjusts his hat. And then he looks into it.

It’s his face. It’s just his stupid fucking face.

There’s his hair, and his eyes, and that mole on his cheek, mirrored, on the other side, now — on the other side — on the —

That reminds him of something —

(Doesn’t it?)

No, it doesn’t. It can’t. It shouldn’t.

He shakes his head. His brain is, suddenly, foggy around the edges. It’s something he’s felt before, felt often, even; that fogginess, that slowness. His brain making connections and then stumbling over them. Sometimes it happens with something as simple as cutting chicken, sometimes with something like a pair of shoes. He doesn't like to let other people know about it; it's a weakness he can't afford to divulge, and he doesn't want to give anyone an excuse to pity him, either. He might not be the smartest, and maybe this proves it, but he can cook and he can transmute and that's _enough_. He doesn't need anything from anyone. So what if his brain goes blank once in a while? Shit happens. 

Even if it’s never been this dense before. Even if it’s never been this bad.

(There’s a memory, there, the back of his mind insists. Somewhere. There’s something important about this, this face in the mirror, something you forgot.)

He moves his hand, and it’s trembling. He watches as this Mirror-Taako touches his own shoulder. For a vivid, strange moment, he thinks that it all looks wrong; that this person in the mirror should be reaching out, towards him, through the glass, touching his shoulder without having to imagine it. Pulling him into a hug, loose and easy. Comfortable. That this Mirror-Taako would laugh and scold and breathe, _should_ be breathing, should be _real,_ and next to him—

How the fuck could he do that? he thinks, more than a little unsettled, and he stashes the mirror in the back of his closet again, vowing to toss it at the next town they reach. After all, he’s only one person.

 

2.

“What’s that?” the Director asks. Her voice is soft, searching. 

Taako blinks at her, puzzled. "What's what?"

When she speaks again her voice is more modulated, more normal. He wonders if he imagined the longing in it. It wouldn't be the first time.

“Where did you get that from?” She’s looking at his right hand. He glances down. He’d forgotten about the umbrella until she mentioned it.

“Oh, this? I found it on some skeleton lady,” Taako explains, twirling it in his hand. “She was wearing a red robe, but she was like, totally dead, so it wasn’t stealing. Scout’s honor.”

Magnus makes a curious noise. “How do you know it was a lady?”

Taako opens his mouth, then closes it and frowns. How _had_ he known that?

Above them, the Director’s knuckles are pale on her staff.

“Dunno,” Taako says, finally. “Guess it just — felt right, you know what I mean?”

“Ladies can be skeletons _too,_ Magnus,” Merle says, pointedly. Magnus gasps.

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“Gentlemen,” the Director says, her voice softer than usual, almost a little choked. “If you’re ready to come with me?”

“Sure,” Magnus says, all willingness, all eagerness; he and Merle set off down the hall. Then they both pause, and look back. “You coming, Taako?”

“ _Fuck,”_ Taako mumbles, rubbing at his temples with one hand, “my head hurts.”

“It hurts?” the Director says. “I’m so — um.” She looks away for a second and clears her throat. “Why do you think it hurts?”

“Dunno,” Taako says, carelessly, rubbing a bit more and then jogging up to join them. “It just does a lot.” He declines to mention the mirror thing, for fear of sounding nuts. “Like — you know. Stuff gets foggy, and sometimes it gets worse than that. _Bzzzzzt._ Like there’s a drill going, just drillin’ right in!” He laughs. “Fuck, who knows, maybe it could give me some decent brains or something, you know?”

Magnus and Merle both laugh too, but the Director doesn't. She looks sad, for a second, but the look vanishes as soon as it came. “You should have a look at it,” she says, “with one of our healers.” Then she whisks herself off down the hallway, leading them all forward. Taako rubs at his temples one more time, and follows.

 

3.

Elves don’t sleep much, and dream even less when they do, but Taako’s dreams are consistent, appearing every time he sleeps like clockwork. Taako dreams of fire and smoke, black clouds in the sky that are grasping and hungry and sometimes glow red, just around the edges — a color that could be fire, and could be the last claws of a sunset, and could just be part of the dream. Everything in his dreams seems red. The sky, the fire, the flashes he gets in the corners of his eyes. It’s red, that is, until he tries to look, and then it turns a fuzzy grey, one that seems more like the absence of color than anything else.

A face that’s his but isn’t, not quite, flits around the edges too. It’s the only thing he can look at, sometimes, and sometimes he can’t see it at all, like looking into a cracked and blurry mirror. He tries to reach out, to blow the smoke away with a gust of wind from his staff, to get a good look at this stranger that lives in his head and steals his fucking face.

(The only difference is the hair — short instead of long, fluffy curls which rest against this stranger’s ears and eyebrows and temples. So achingly familiar and yet so completely absent from his memory. He’s never had hair that short, has he?)

The figure always calls to him, and extends their hand. Sometimes Taako can see their face and it’s a slightly blurred reflection of his own. Sometimes the face is covered by the shadow of a red hood, the hand that reaches for his is disturbingly skeletal, though he never shivers when he sees it — it’s familiar, like the stranger’s hair, in a way he cannot name. Sometimes he can only piece out bits of the stranger’s expression from the blurry mess that is their face; just a figure, flames bursting all around them, a mouth — Taako’s own, familiar, gap-toothed mouth — curving into a smile, wide and happy, before being swallowed by a fireball.

It should go without saying that he fucking hates these dreams.

Taako always wakes in a cold sweat, breathing too fast, his heart pounding quick, rabbitlike. He’s glad he doesn’t have to sleep much, on those nights; he settles into meditation instead, to calm his pulse.

One night Merle is awake, paging through his worn Xtreme Teen Bible and humming to himself when Taako flinches himself out of the dream. He glances over, casually indifferent in a way Taako knows is fake (if only from the many, many times he’s had to pretend to be indifferent himself, around these two fools). He takes note of Taako’s heavy breathing and shaking hands.

“Weird dream?” he asks, as if he doesn’t really care either way. “You know, I’m a certified dream interpreter. I can find omens and shit in ‘em.”

Taako suspects that there is no actual certification to back up this claim, and even if there is, that Merle got it for fifty gold off the Fantasy Internet.

“I’m good,” Taako says, voice tight. He doesn’t say _thanks anyway._ Merle grunts and goes back to humming, turning pages in a way that soon fades into almost-comforting background noise.

Taako tries to meditate, fall into a trance until morning so he won’t have to be so fucking afraid of absolutely nothing. But he can’t stop thinking of fire, burning the world to glass like in Phandalin, and of that familiar yet completely foreign face — which has, suddenly as it appeared, vanished from his mind. Was it him? Or Sazed? Magnus, Merle, the Director? He doesn’t think so, but — fuck, there’s just _nothing._ A blank grey face. A mannequin.

The way his dreams turn to static the moment he wakes, he thinks sourly, is the worst part of all; he doesn’t even have anything to be genuinely afraid of, just a feeling of general terror that lasts an hour on average, until he can get his head in working order again (or, in as proper a working order as it ever is).

He gives up on meditating and casts a quick spell to build up the fire. He’s been better at evocation lately, and it’ll be morning in a little while, so he’s not burning a spell slot. Merle still says nothing, his humming growing softer and occasionally broken by moments of silence.

Taako watches the fire, and feels hollow and cold for reasons he cannot remember.

 

4.

“It’s a burn,” Magnus says, wincing. “Carey was trying to teach me to do this _thing_ where you jump through fire and it was really cool but, uh. I wasn’t great at it.”

“Well, jeez,” Merle says, pushing up his sleeves. “I can help with that!”

“Hey, don’t waste a spell slot,” Taako says. “Just slap some aloe vera and honey on that sucker, and get a cold compress. It’ll stop hurting in a little bit after that.”

When he looks up from his book of fantasy crossword puzzles, Merle and Magnus are both staring at him.

“How’d you know that?” Merle says. “I thought healing was _my_ thing.”

“Coulda fooled me with all the Zones of Truth you cast, pal,” Taako says.

“No, but seriously,” Magnus says. He is always so goddamn earnest, like a puppy. Taako is inexplicably fond of it. “How’d you know that helps with burns?”

“I used to get a lot of burns,” Taako says, absentmindedly, getting up to root around in the cabinets for the honey that Merle dumps into his tea. “And so did—”

So did.

He freezes. So did?

“Oh,” Magnus says, clearly not understanding at all. “From, um, from your cooking show?”

“Yeah,” Taako says. _No._ “Yeah, must’ve been that.”

“Must’ve?”

“I mean, it was,” Taako says, and forces a laugh. “Duh. From the cooking show.”

But he would never get burned while cooking. He was too good at it, at tossing the hot things from pot to pot with magic, at amazing the audience. The burn remedies would have had to have been for something else—

He rubs at his forehead. He’s getting one of his stupid headaches again.

“Yeah,” he repeats. “Got a lot of goddamn burns during that show.”

 

5.

“ _YOU FOUND HER,”_ the Red Robe howls, a sound that’s objectively terrifying but somehow sounds, to Taako, like joy. “ _YOU FOUND HER_ —”

“What, this?” Taako says, and ignores the instant headache, and the nausea he feels at trying to think too hard about his own damn Umbra Staff. “You knew the skeleton this belonged to? I stole it. Figured, you know, anything’s worth more in the hands of the living.”

The Red Robe makes another noise, howl mixed with faint static. Maybe a word. Taako can’t make it out. His head hurts, his head hurts so fucking bad—

“Sorry,” he says, teeth clenched, to Magnus and Merle, “sorry—” and he falls to his knees, clutching his head in both hands. He says something. He says something and can’t remember it, an instant after. The Red Robe makes another noise in return, this time a series of chitters and clicks, whimpers. The sounds an animal might make.

“Mongoose,” Taako says, then doesn’t know why he said it, then _does,_ then doesn’t, “fuck—”

He hears himself making a low, mournful chirp in return. He hears it like he isn’t in his own body. He hears himself making a nonsense noise, a word that’s not a word. A name? His ears drown everything out with white noise. The red robe vanishes. His headache pounds away at him, so bad he can only sit there and clutch his head and whimper. He feels at the very edge of something, of realization, of discovery. He feels tired and old.

“Taako,” Magnus and Merle are saying, terrified, “Taako!”

“My fucking _head,_ ” he says, and stands, swaying. “Look, I’m fine. Been happening a lot lately. Let’s just go.”

His friends refuse to listen to him, though, and Magnus makes him sit down and sip water from his canteen. Taako does so, knowing this will not cure the headache.

“Did the Red Robe curse you?” Merle asks anxiously, the fingers of his Soulwood arm flexing.

Taako shakes his head. “Just my head and its bad fuckin’ timing, kemosabe. It’s nothing.”

And it feels like nothing, now, with the Red Robe gone. Magnus and Merle exchange this scared look that Taako hates seeing on them, but he says nothing, just sips some more water, and lets it be.

 

6.

 _LUP,_ the wall says. Taako reads it and forgets, reads it again and forgets. He asks Angus what it says and he says it, then Taako forgets. He spells it, and Taako remembers for a second, and then forgets.

“Not your fault, Agnes,” he mumbles when Angus breathlessly apologizes, “you forget I’m not the _brightest_ elf who ever went to practice—”

“I don’t think that’s true, sir,” Angus says staunchly. “I think you’re very smart. Why do you get those headaches?”

“Fuck if I know, kid,” Taako says. “They just happen at random, you know? They have ever since I can remember.”

“Since you were a child?” Angus says, and Taako opens his mouth to say _yes,_ then closes it again. Something’s at war in his head, tugging him in two directions. He remembers a headache-free childhood, but whenever he remembers that, the headache starts to build again, in his child-self, in his memories. These days the fogginess is worse and worse, progressively. These days he can’t even _remember_ things without gritting his teeth.

“I don’t know,” he admits, finally. He stares at that nonsense-word, burned into the wall, until he can see white light behind his eyes, until the pain gets so bad he _has_ to bite the inside of his cheek and move away. He thinks that if he could just understand that word the aching in his head would ease, or fade entirely, and the rest of the universe would unfold into glorious, perfect sense.

Or maybe not. Maybe the dust would clear and his headache would fade and Taako would still be the fucking idiot he’s always been.

“Do you not remember?” Angus prods. Goddamn prying little brat detective, Taako thinks, not without a strange rush of fondness.

“I guess not,” Taako says. “To tell you the truth, Ango, a lot of what I remember about being a kid seems . . . not right somehow.”

Another headache starts up as he says it, as he thinks it. He realizes he’s cradling his temples at about the same moment that Angus’s worried face swims into his vision. He’s gnawing on his lip something awful. Taako thinks, absent-minded, _I should stop him doing that, he’ll wind up looking like L_ —

Then his whole brain whites out, buzzing and static filling his ears until he resurfaces, whimpering, and Angus is gone. He runs in about ten seconds later with the Director and Merle in tow, saying something in a low terrified voice about healing and headaches and how he _doesn’t know what’s wrong, Mr. Taako just kind of fell over, something must have happened._ Taako says something, but it comes out in a mumble, in words that aren’t words. The Director is staring, ashen, at the nonsense-word on the wall.

Merle heals him, or says a healing spell, but nothing changes. The headache is still there, ever-present, throbbing just above his ears.

“D’you feel better?” Merle asks, anxiously, and Angus bobs up and down on his feet, still chewing his lip.

“Great,” Taako lies through his teeth. “Just fucking phenomenal.”

He leaves the room as fast as he can, and it gets a little better after that, without the word in close proximity.

 

7.

“Do you have any family?” Kravitz asks, absentmindedly, on one of their earlier dates. Taako’s gotten him into his apartment and out of his suit jacket, finally, and the loose collar of his white shirt and his rolled-up sleeves are doing a _lot_  for Taako's jittery stomach _._ He’s sitting on one of the kitchen chairs and Taako is making tea, which is one of the only things he can cook without getting the shakes and starting to panic over whether he’s poisoned it or not.

Sometimes he misses cooking pretty bad. Not tonight, though. He’s okay tonight.

“No, I guess not,” he says, and then his stomach feels funny, like he’s told a lie and he knows it.

“Huh,” Kravitz hums. “Funny.”

“What?” he says, turning and blinking. “Why?”

“I don’t know, really,” Kravitz says. “It’s just the way you move sometimes. Like you’re used to walking next to someone.” He pauses. “Sorry, that was weird, wasn’t it?”

Taako hums dissent, though it was a bit strange. “Just means you look at me a lot,” he says, and winks, and then adds, “and I’d be a hypocrite if I tried to complain about that, babe.”

Kravitz grins. It’s a shy little smile, like the moon behind a cloud. Taako hands him his tea and then perches on the edge of the table, deliberately close, enough that he thinks Krav would be blushing if he had blood left to blush with. Taako is kind of blushing, too. It’s been — well, it’s been never that he’s felt like this about a guy, heartsick enough to invite him over, to make him tea, to answer questions about his past.

He thinks he might remember saying to someone, once — their face he doesn’t still have a hold of, but that’s his memory for you, Swiss fuckin’ cheese — but anyway he thinks he might remember saying to this person that he wasn’t built for love, not like other people were. That he didn’t have enough space in his heart.

“Your heart’s a lot bigger than you think, Taako,” they’d said. “You’ll see.”

He wishes he could tell them they were right.

He tries to dismiss the thought. Why waste time on past conversations when Kravitz is right here in front of him, tie loose, one shirt button undone? So Taako reaches up to touch his cheek, and runs his hand down his throat a little, soft wispy touches, nothing substantial. Nonsensically, he wants to be tender. He wants to know he has the capacity.

Kravitz catches his hand and kisses the palm, once, softly. “Thanks for the tea,” he says.

“Do you have to go soon?” Taako says, equally softly. He doesn't want to break this moment. Not this one, that seems so new. His head doesn’t even hurt or feel foggy. There’s no nausea, no deja vu, just Kravitz and his moonlight smile and his mouth on Taako’s palm.

“The dead never rest,” Kravitz confirms.

“Take a day off soon,” Taako says, reckless. “We can go somewhere together. To the beach. I’ll teach you to surf.”

“You can surf?” This amuses him, Taako can tell. He isn’t offended by the amusement, though, not like he would be from anyone else. He only winks.

“I’m full of surprises, baby.”

“All right,” Kravitz says, kissing his palm again. “Soon. A beach day. Just us.”

Any other date, and Taako would have had the guy in bed by now, never to see him again in the morning. But this is Kravitz, and these are beach day promises, and his head doesn’t hurt. And this is different. So he smiles, and they finish their tea.

  

8.

After Wonderland, he happens to pass by a mirror, and he grits his teeth in preparation for the inevitable headache.

It never comes.

He stares at himself for fifteen minutes, and it never hurts once.

But something in his stomach feels mournful, desperate, tired. Loss, deeper and harsher than he expected it to be for just his good looks. Maybe the pain has transferred itself there, this time.

Mangus clicks when he steps now, being made of wood, and all that, and he clicks up behind Taako, standing there with a certain uncertainty in his limbs, the bouncing of his body on the balls of his feet. It’s Barry’s mirror that Taako is looking in, searching for hints of himself.

Unbidden, he remembers looking in a dollar-store mirror after Sazed made a stupid comment, imagining his reflection reaching out to hold him. He must have been really goddamn lonely, to imagine something like that. He must have been.

“Are you okay?” Magnus asks. Taako looks at his Umbra Staff, leaning against the wall, and his wizard hat, sitting next to it.

“I don’t look like me,” he says. “Sorry. I know it’s fucking stupid, you and Merle lost way worse stuff but I just feel like — I feel like something died, you know? Like something’s really, really wrong.”

It’s more candid than he usually is with Magnus. It’s more candid than he usually is with _anyone._

“Yeah,” Magnus murmurs. “I guess it would feel really weird, to not look like her.”

“What?” Taako says, whirling around to look at him. “What? Her? Who’s her? I’m talking about _me._ How _I_ look.”

“I’m sorry,” Magnus says, hands outstretched. There’s no expression on his wooden face and it pisses Taako off. Usually Magnus is so easy to read, and to have that taken away is weird, and a little scary. “I don’t know why I said that, I think — I don’t know. I feel like I remember things but they’re all too crazy. I feel like I was—”

His voice turns to static, and Taako’s head turns to fog.

He stumbles backwards.

“Fuck you,” he says, voice reedy. “You’re making my head hurt.” He’s overflowing with this ridiculous feeling of loss, and mourning, and being not-himself in a way he should never be. His identity has been washed down the drain but it doesn’t make any _sense_ . He looks pretty much the same as he ever did. He looks a little more normal, sure, but it’s not that bad, he’s not _gone,_ not like—

Not like—

Magnus is standing there, wooden arm outstretched. Taako realizes he’s crying at the same time Magnus does.

“I’m really sorry,” Magnus says, softly, and buries him in a hug, which is less like hugging a bear than it usually is and less comforting as a result. Taako clings to him anyway, like a child. “I didn’t mean to make your headaches start up.” Then he says something really weird. “I think you’re remembering, too,” he says. “Your mind is stronger than mine was, Taako.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, my dude,” Taako says. “Just keep on huggin’, capiche?” Another couple of tears leak out onto Magnus’s shoulder.

“Okay, yeah,” Magnus says. “I can do that.” He holds him tight, murmurs _sorry_ again. Taako doesn’t let go until Barry wanders back into the room, and the he rears back furiously, wiping at his eyes. There’s a _very_ short list of people that are allowed to see him cry and Barry's _not_ on it. (Though his presence is not the most offensive thing Taako has ever felt. Eh. Thought for another time.)

“Let’s go,” Magnus says, voice full of quiet authority. “Let’s find out the truth.”

 

(+1.)

“Well, okay, fuckin’ hell, bottoms up,” Taako says, and after he tips the liquid back into his mouth, for the first time in years, his head is blessedly clear.

And then grief hits him like a wave, enough that he crumples, like he did before, in front of Angus — holding his chest, this time.

“Sir?” Angus says, anxious again, wrapping small hands around his wrists. “Sir, is it your head?”

“No, bubbeleh,” Taako says. “No, it’s not.” Lucretia and her guards come crashing in, and he looks over at Barry, who is also clutching his chest, overwhelmed and teary. “Don’t let me forget again,” he says, to Barry, good old Barry, Barry who he _knows,_ Barry who he  _remembers,_  and Barry looks back and nods, reaches out to grab onto his shoulder.

“I won’t,” he says, with finality. “I won’t, Taako.”

“Forget what?” Angus says, still worried. Gnawing on his lip. Like Lup.

“My sister,” Taako says, and the word feels heavy in his mouth, like a good meal. Home-cooked, and all that. “My sister.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Angus says, confused and soft, and Taako bites at his own lip to keep tears at bay, look up at Lucretia’s crumbling face. It has been crumbling all along, he realizes. Everytime she looks at them she’s missing them. He recognizes this, but it doesn’t make him any less angry.

“I knew,” he says, and it’s to Angus, but it’s also to her. “I couldn’t remember. But I knew.” There’s Barry’s hand on his shoulder again, tight and familiar. “I knew.”

 

(+2.)

Taako saw a phoenix once, on one of the planets, one of the cycles.

Magnus had come across it, searching for the Light, and he’d called them all to it, just to look. Taako had watched it, its proud orange head and black eyes, already smoking a bit, at the edges.

He’d elbowed Lup.

“Look,” he said. “It’s you.”

He’d meant it like a joke — fire was always Her Thing — but she’d turned and grinned at him, wide and brilliant, like it was the best thing she’d ever heard.

Taako remembers that, and he remembers all the times his staff has burned and moved on its own, the voice in the back of his mind saying _Trust Barry, love Barry, it’s me, it’s me._

_It’s me._

He remembers phoenixes.

He snaps the staff over his knee.

The world turns into an inferno, and even as he’s thrown back, he laughs.

And then he sits up, and sees her face widen in a smile — with Taako’s own familiar gap-toothed mouth — and then he’s running at her, so fast he can’t feel his lungs, only his heartbeat, back again, pounding in his ears. Past that, he can hear her laughing, too, same cadence, same snort at the end.

“You’re dating the Grim Reaper?” she yells in his direction, unable to resist teasing him a little, and for the first time that he can ever remember, he thanks the gods.

He can’t hug her. She’s still a lich, barely holding her form together. The only thing identical to him is her smile. His hands pass right through and they turn into clenched fists, terrified and exhilarated.

She calls him _dingus,_ and her whole body is fire-bright with love, and Taako feels the burned patches inside of him healing, closing up. Aloe and honey, a cold compress.

Lup is alive.

Everything else, in that moment, is dust in the wind.

“I didn’t remember you existed,” he says, “goofus.” And he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> like if you cried because uhhh....i sure did kids!


End file.
